No Zack, they actually had destroyed it. They beat it into a bloody tangled mess of dead tangos stacked so high that they blotted out the sun, They killed so many of the local bad guys and the thousands of jihadist visitors that King Leonidas sent a dispatch saying “Dag! Nice work”. So when you say “the US military and allied Sunni militias famously defeated it” I will accept your words, but not the snotty tone with which you meant them.

You see Zack, the Surge worked. We won the war. The Iraqis actually formed a legitimate democratic government. And then we walked away and said “There you go a Republic, if you can keep it”. We took our toys and left. The Bush administration agreed to take all our troops out because that was the only way to get all the Iraqi factions to join in a government. But neither the Iraqis or us expected that to be the final deal. We and they rightfully expected a follow on negotiation about a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) after their elections and some minor legitimacy for the new government.

We needed to stay because they needed our help to actually make the whole thing work. The groundwork was laid, but the new US President Barack Obama completely torpedoed the negotiations and made sure we couldn’t stay and help. So they were on their own with Iran on one side and Syria on the other, both of whom had been huge enablers of the insurgency in the first place. It is hardly surprising that the Iraqis didn’t dominate at the democracy or the security on their own. And all of us who could identify the clue bag pointed out that our departure would yield this exact outcome.

……………………………………………….*Retired Special Operations Master Sergeant, Jim Hanson (“Uncle Jimbo”) is now focused on writing about the military, politics, intelligence operations and foreign policy.

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Actually Jim we left a lot of our toys there
ISIS has them now I think the count was 500 humvees
Iraq didn’t want any American troops in their country that was what they demanded and got from Bush
Now with ISIS they still say the same thing